Hostages Say Suspects Contemplated Suicide

During the 17-hour ordeal as hostages inside their Rolling Hills Estates jewelry store, Karen and Marshall Varon said Monday, they more than once talked their alleged captors out of suicide.

They listened as the alleged robbers told them their life stories and confided their fears about prison. They pleaded with sheriff’s officials to bring cigarettes and sandwiches to the armed men. They even brought in their own lawyers to help Robert James Miller, 47, and Matthew Lou Ross, 48, negotiate with sheriff’s deputies.

They did all this, said Morgan’s Jewelry owner Marshall Varon, because they believed helping their alleged captors gave them their best chance of getting out of the situation alive Saturday night. But in the process, Varon said, he grew to sympathize with the two.

“We bonded. . . . I feel sorry for them,” he said, adding that they turned to theft in part because they couldn’t find good jobs with their police records.

His wife had no such reaction.

“I have no sympathy,” she said. “It’s going to take time to get back” what they’ve taken.

Miller and Ross are expected to be arraigned today on charges of kidnapping and armed robbery. They surrendered Sunday morning to special weapons officers and released their six hostages, all employees of the Peninsula Center store.

Both men could face long sentences, said Det. Sam Washington. Ross has a prior conviction for robbing a bank in Oregon, and Miller has prior convictions as well.

The hostage drama began Saturday afternoon when Ross and Miller, carrying badges and wearing business suits, entered the store, claiming to be security officers.

When he confronted one of them, Marshall Varon said, the man pulled out a gun and announced a robbery.

A store employee quietly alerted the Sheriff’s Department. As the suspects left with jewelry through the back door, they were met by a deputy with his gun drawn.

“They startled each other,” Marshall Varon said. Then the two men ran back into the store, beginning a 17-hour siege.

The suspects often appeared uncertain about what to do, Varon said, but were caring of their hostages, at one point dragging chairs into the jewelry vault so the hostages could sit there protected in the event of a gun battle with deputies.

“At least a dozen times, they wanted to end their own lives,” he said, adding that he “had a heart-to-heart [with Miller] about not taking his own life.”

At the suspects’ request, the Varons tried to reach attorney Johnny L. Cochran, and also tried to get in touch with Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, so they could bargain for lesser sentences. Eventually, the Varons summoned two of their own lawyers, who advised the men but are no longer representing them.

During one of their talks, Ross, who said he was a Vietnam veteran, confided to Varon that he used to be a physical therapist and he wondered what his life would have been like if he had stuck with physical therapy.

Varon responded that his wife had a kink in her neck and said, “Let me see what you can do.”

Ross put down his gun and tried to soothe the knotted muscles in Karen Varon’s back.

“She was too tense to enjoy it,” Varon said.

Nor did Karen Varon believe the men’s story that they were accomplished jewel thieves. “They wanted to pretend they were professionals, but they didn’t have a clue,” she said. “They didn’t know a diamond from a cubic [zirconium].”

Through the night, Miller and Ross bargained with a sheriff’s negotiator, at one point allowing one woman who had planned to spend the evening celebrating her 30th wedding anniversary to leave in exchange for eight sandwiches and a pack of cigarettes. Two other hostages, one of whom was vomiting repeatedly, also were released in the early morning. The final three hostages, including the Varons, left the store with their alleged captors just after 11 a.m.

The Varons said that although the hostage negotiators manipulated the suspects to bring the drama to a safe ending, the couple questioned the tactics of the deputies who first arrived.

“He shouldn’t have been there,” Marshall Varon said of the deputy who surprised the robbers as they fled. “To me, the proper course is to stay invisible.”

But sheriff’s Det. Sam Washington said deputies followed department procedures, and the peaceful end to the potentially violent crisis showed the department handled the situation properly.

“Which one is more dangerous: to contain them in one place, or chase them all over the city?” Washington said. “In a place like a mall, you’re better off containing them in one spot then to have them running all over the mall.”

The store will reopen today.